Response to Crow's Post
Hey sista,
So your post should probably lead to my own post, but I'd rather engage in this public forum. While what I write might sound like it contradicts what you've written, I do not begin with that intent. There are a couple of things that I would like to address. Before we get to a discussion of "normal" you were right to foreground your musings in the framework of "society." None of us decided to live in (nor were we involved in the creation or establishment of) this "society" in which we exist. Our society is inherited. All societies are. I mean this both in the macro- and micro- cosmic senses of the word. Be your society urban, rural, farming or the faire circuit. We are, all, born into societies that have their own cultural systems of productivity, existence and continuation. Those systems, via certain hegemonic and ideological practices, inscribe upon the inhabitants of those societies the "systems" through which values, education and ethics are passed on from one generation to the next. This process of inheritance is simply another way of describing what you have identified as social programming. Therefore, what those of us who are deviating from are the systems of "culture" that our society has inherited from so many societies before our own. See, what I find interesting is that everyone acknowledges that people and societies progress and change and evolve, but the systems that define cultural norms (i.e. laws) remain, in many senses, stagnant. Hence, our contemporary society, rather than constructing new laws - or re-evaluating the moral and ethical codes to which we are subject - attempts to force (or manipulate) our "culture" into functioning within the strictures of an antiquated ideological system. So, the contemporary "we" unearth old laws that we find hilarious: such as how in Texas it's illegal to take a bath with a horse or in NJ how it's still illegal to ride with a chicken in your car on Sunday. Yeah, for us those are moments of humor, but at some point there were enough people who felt strongly enough about those topics that they decided to pass laws that made those practices "illegal." The process of making something "illegal" is also the process by which a society defines deviant (i.e. all the laws that make sodomy and homosexuality illegal. - Fuck, although I don't know how true it is, I have heard that there are some states in which any sex that is outside of the male/female missionary position, is illegal. Imagine that, a blowjob given or received, from a man or a woman, is illegal.) But it's all those - what contemporary "we" consider fucked up - cultural systems of morals and ethics that our contemporary society has inherited. And it's our politicians and those in the - what I will call the "haves" category - that are deeply invested in maintaining those antiquated systems. Why? It has to do with power, as well as having to do with what the "haves" have inherited. Now, here logic gets kinda funny. Why should those who have inherited power have any interest at all in re-evaluating the cultural systems under which we currently exist? They don't. (What's a little bit wonky is that the economic systems of cultural inheritance that have passed "power" along from father to son have existed along side and concurrently with theoretical/ideological systems of moral and ethical codes of behavior. I mean our society still has some way of evaluating "good and bad" - i.e. fucking those who don't consent. Even the "haves" have to "answer" to society if they fall too far outside of, or deviate from, the norm. But it gets even funnier; If the "haves" have enough money or power they can say, "Fuck you!" to society, "I could give a shit what you - the society - want or think. I have the power." Look at our president who is at an all time low in the public opinion polls. Really, in the context of popular public (or society's) opinion, our President is a deviant. But he could care less. He's got the power.
Yeah, my thoughts are just meandering all over the place. So, "normal" - being like everyone else - most of my friends fall so far outside of that parameter that it's not even worth mentioning. But most of my friends are defined by society as being on the margin, or the minority. (Really, I have tried to steer this as far from a discussion about race as possible - but can't you just here the echoes?) See, you have to muddy the lines: It's not JUST about race, or gender, or rich versus poor, or the sexually deviant from the "normal," because individuals are all of those things. We have racial identities and gender identities and economic identities and sexual orientation identities. We can be "normal" in some of our identities and "deviant" in others. (See, it's almost impossible to talk about what I'd like to talk about next without seeming like I am buying into the trope of making the "straight white male" the bad guy. 'Cause I'm not. But our contemporary society has this specter, or concept, of a "straight white male" upon which many other systems are based. For example, a guy sucking a dick is deviant, but why? Because straight guys don't do that. Hence, if most "normal guys" don't suck dick, then the guy who does is deviant. But it's not enough to simply define the deviant. You have to kill him. Exterminate him like a bug or a disease. Why? Because as long as there is this guy who likes sucking dick there is the remote possibility that some other guy is going to over come his social conditioning and TALK to the cocksucker. The normal guy will figure out the cocksucker is not only "normal" in every other way, but he's a nice guy, and the cocksucker is kinda cool - in every other non-cocksucking way. And then, god-forbid, the "normal" guy questions his own programming - all the things for which he might go to hell - and decides to make an educated investigation and decision about cocksucking. The fag is totally "normal" in every other way, in fact he's cool. So the "normal" guy sucks a dick. He might decide, "Nope, that was gross and I'm never doing it again." But he also realizes that the world didn't end. God did not condemn his soul to the ever burning fires of hell - AND LIFE WENT THE FUCK ON! He doesn't have to kill the fag. See, here's the problem, now, he might defend the fag because he has decided that the fag is allowed to be an individual and make his own decisions. Now instead of just having to kill the fag, society has to kill the fag and the other "new-ish" individual that is capable of making his own fucking decisions. Being "normal" really requires a lot of people with sheep-like mentality. (No insult meant to sheep.)
I have so many more thoughts on this topic, but I will end with this thought, because I doubt that even Crow has read this much of my ramblings. So I guess the biggest problem that "society" has with deviants - It's not even really an actual problem - It's the "idea" of a problem. So (and this is a hypothetical) - Straight "haves" decide fags are allowed to exist and they go so far as to tolerate said fag's existence. Laws get passed saying that it's not okay to kill fags. Mostly because the bible says killing people is wrong - and as complicated as this may be the majority of society doesn't kill the fags because the "killing" seriously conflicts with their desire to be "good" people. So, society has to "tolerate" fags. Cool. What? Fags want to marry? "Fuck NO!" - Shit! The fags found that document, the one we've been using to protect our right to bear arms and the one that gives us the right to free speech. But the constitution doesn't say shit about the right to suck a dick. But it does say shit about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - and somebody figured out a long time ago that the whole killing thing, just because you don't like someone (read the Civil rights Movement) isn't right. "Wait. You mean just because we gave women the right to vote, and then we passed laws saying we couldn't discriminate against black people simply because of their color, you mean we can't discriminate against fags either?! What the fuck is this? Yeah, we said 'equal rights' but how the fuck did we know that 'equal' meant 'equal.' - Can we take them back?" Sure, which is what our current President is trying to do. Note the Patriot Act. Back to our story -- So, we can kill the fags, and it's illegal to beat them up in back alleys and burn their houses and bars. Now they want to get married. So the laws concerning 'civil unions' and 'gay marriage' creep into legislature. Now there's a fag couple living next door. You can't do shit about it. Get the fuck over it. Here is where it gets scary for Joe Normal. Here, via the processes of programming and inheritance, has a wife (who is bare foot and pregnant in the kitchen), and they have a passel o' kids. The straight family passes on their values to their kids. Yeah, everyone's happy. Please remember we are not talking about individuals, we are talking about a community, in this instance - the family who lives in the straight house - and the patriarch and the ma have established and agreed upon the rules under which this family will function. And all is right with the world. The straight kids will grow up and believe in Jesus and have missionary straight sex, and take care of the parents when they get old and die. - Then the Fags, who live next door, "What the fuck do you mean they have the right to adopt children?!", adopt a little boyorgirl. Does anyone see the train wreck coming? So the Straight kids go to school with the little adopted Fag boyorgirl, whose Fag parents have been infecting himher with all of these gay values; do well in school, believe in something, chartreuse should be outlawed, you know, gay values. Then the kids from both families, who are just kids and could give a shit about the family values that their parents have desperately been trying to instill in them, well, they're kids. So they play together. And they laugh and learn and grow. They become friends. Now the Straight kids don't actually hate the Fag kid. The fag kid's kinda cool. -Ready for the weird that is the big BIG fear that is the impetus for so much hatred against gaydom- What happens if a boy from Striaght house likes the boy from Gay house too much and all of that fucking social programming FAILS! - I'm just sayin' - It's not like it happens like this, but it might, but I have no idea, 'cause imma big fag. Okay, I've babble enough.
It's not really my fault. I have been waiting for the ComCast guy to show up and I have had coffee and Dave's not here. Two days ago Dave said to me that Thomas Jefferson advocated scrapping the constitution every twenty years and rewriting it to serve the needs of the society in which it was written. Yeah, we never did that. Gosh I bet this is a long post. It's probably rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Yeah me.
So your post should probably lead to my own post, but I'd rather engage in this public forum. While what I write might sound like it contradicts what you've written, I do not begin with that intent. There are a couple of things that I would like to address. Before we get to a discussion of "normal" you were right to foreground your musings in the framework of "society." None of us decided to live in (nor were we involved in the creation or establishment of) this "society" in which we exist. Our society is inherited. All societies are. I mean this both in the macro- and micro- cosmic senses of the word. Be your society urban, rural, farming or the faire circuit. We are, all, born into societies that have their own cultural systems of productivity, existence and continuation. Those systems, via certain hegemonic and ideological practices, inscribe upon the inhabitants of those societies the "systems" through which values, education and ethics are passed on from one generation to the next. This process of inheritance is simply another way of describing what you have identified as social programming. Therefore, what those of us who are deviating from are the systems of "culture" that our society has inherited from so many societies before our own. See, what I find interesting is that everyone acknowledges that people and societies progress and change and evolve, but the systems that define cultural norms (i.e. laws) remain, in many senses, stagnant. Hence, our contemporary society, rather than constructing new laws - or re-evaluating the moral and ethical codes to which we are subject - attempts to force (or manipulate) our "culture" into functioning within the strictures of an antiquated ideological system. So, the contemporary "we" unearth old laws that we find hilarious: such as how in Texas it's illegal to take a bath with a horse or in NJ how it's still illegal to ride with a chicken in your car on Sunday. Yeah, for us those are moments of humor, but at some point there were enough people who felt strongly enough about those topics that they decided to pass laws that made those practices "illegal." The process of making something "illegal" is also the process by which a society defines deviant (i.e. all the laws that make sodomy and homosexuality illegal. - Fuck, although I don't know how true it is, I have heard that there are some states in which any sex that is outside of the male/female missionary position, is illegal. Imagine that, a blowjob given or received, from a man or a woman, is illegal.) But it's all those - what contemporary "we" consider fucked up - cultural systems of morals and ethics that our contemporary society has inherited. And it's our politicians and those in the - what I will call the "haves" category - that are deeply invested in maintaining those antiquated systems. Why? It has to do with power, as well as having to do with what the "haves" have inherited. Now, here logic gets kinda funny. Why should those who have inherited power have any interest at all in re-evaluating the cultural systems under which we currently exist? They don't. (What's a little bit wonky is that the economic systems of cultural inheritance that have passed "power" along from father to son have existed along side and concurrently with theoretical/ideological systems of moral and ethical codes of behavior. I mean our society still has some way of evaluating "good and bad" - i.e. fucking those who don't consent. Even the "haves" have to "answer" to society if they fall too far outside of, or deviate from, the norm. But it gets even funnier; If the "haves" have enough money or power they can say, "Fuck you!" to society, "I could give a shit what you - the society - want or think. I have the power." Look at our president who is at an all time low in the public opinion polls. Really, in the context of popular public (or society's) opinion, our President is a deviant. But he could care less. He's got the power.
Yeah, my thoughts are just meandering all over the place. So, "normal" - being like everyone else - most of my friends fall so far outside of that parameter that it's not even worth mentioning. But most of my friends are defined by society as being on the margin, or the minority. (Really, I have tried to steer this as far from a discussion about race as possible - but can't you just here the echoes?) See, you have to muddy the lines: It's not JUST about race, or gender, or rich versus poor, or the sexually deviant from the "normal," because individuals are all of those things. We have racial identities and gender identities and economic identities and sexual orientation identities. We can be "normal" in some of our identities and "deviant" in others. (See, it's almost impossible to talk about what I'd like to talk about next without seeming like I am buying into the trope of making the "straight white male" the bad guy. 'Cause I'm not. But our contemporary society has this specter, or concept, of a "straight white male" upon which many other systems are based. For example, a guy sucking a dick is deviant, but why? Because straight guys don't do that. Hence, if most "normal guys" don't suck dick, then the guy who does is deviant. But it's not enough to simply define the deviant. You have to kill him. Exterminate him like a bug or a disease. Why? Because as long as there is this guy who likes sucking dick there is the remote possibility that some other guy is going to over come his social conditioning and TALK to the cocksucker. The normal guy will figure out the cocksucker is not only "normal" in every other way, but he's a nice guy, and the cocksucker is kinda cool - in every other non-cocksucking way. And then, god-forbid, the "normal" guy questions his own programming - all the things for which he might go to hell - and decides to make an educated investigation and decision about cocksucking. The fag is totally "normal" in every other way, in fact he's cool. So the "normal" guy sucks a dick. He might decide, "Nope, that was gross and I'm never doing it again." But he also realizes that the world didn't end. God did not condemn his soul to the ever burning fires of hell - AND LIFE WENT THE FUCK ON! He doesn't have to kill the fag. See, here's the problem, now, he might defend the fag because he has decided that the fag is allowed to be an individual and make his own decisions. Now instead of just having to kill the fag, society has to kill the fag and the other "new-ish" individual that is capable of making his own fucking decisions. Being "normal" really requires a lot of people with sheep-like mentality. (No insult meant to sheep.)
I have so many more thoughts on this topic, but I will end with this thought, because I doubt that even Crow has read this much of my ramblings. So I guess the biggest problem that "society" has with deviants - It's not even really an actual problem - It's the "idea" of a problem. So (and this is a hypothetical) - Straight "haves" decide fags are allowed to exist and they go so far as to tolerate said fag's existence. Laws get passed saying that it's not okay to kill fags. Mostly because the bible says killing people is wrong - and as complicated as this may be the majority of society doesn't kill the fags because the "killing" seriously conflicts with their desire to be "good" people. So, society has to "tolerate" fags. Cool. What? Fags want to marry? "Fuck NO!" - Shit! The fags found that document, the one we've been using to protect our right to bear arms and the one that gives us the right to free speech. But the constitution doesn't say shit about the right to suck a dick. But it does say shit about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - and somebody figured out a long time ago that the whole killing thing, just because you don't like someone (read the Civil rights Movement) isn't right. "Wait. You mean just because we gave women the right to vote, and then we passed laws saying we couldn't discriminate against black people simply because of their color, you mean we can't discriminate against fags either?! What the fuck is this? Yeah, we said 'equal rights' but how the fuck did we know that 'equal' meant 'equal.' - Can we take them back?" Sure, which is what our current President is trying to do. Note the Patriot Act. Back to our story -- So, we can kill the fags, and it's illegal to beat them up in back alleys and burn their houses and bars. Now they want to get married. So the laws concerning 'civil unions' and 'gay marriage' creep into legislature. Now there's a fag couple living next door. You can't do shit about it. Get the fuck over it. Here is where it gets scary for Joe Normal. Here, via the processes of programming and inheritance, has a wife (who is bare foot and pregnant in the kitchen), and they have a passel o' kids. The straight family passes on their values to their kids. Yeah, everyone's happy. Please remember we are not talking about individuals, we are talking about a community, in this instance - the family who lives in the straight house - and the patriarch and the ma have established and agreed upon the rules under which this family will function. And all is right with the world. The straight kids will grow up and believe in Jesus and have missionary straight sex, and take care of the parents when they get old and die. - Then the Fags, who live next door, "What the fuck do you mean they have the right to adopt children?!", adopt a little boyorgirl. Does anyone see the train wreck coming? So the Straight kids go to school with the little adopted Fag boyorgirl, whose Fag parents have been infecting himher with all of these gay values; do well in school, believe in something, chartreuse should be outlawed, you know, gay values. Then the kids from both families, who are just kids and could give a shit about the family values that their parents have desperately been trying to instill in them, well, they're kids. So they play together. And they laugh and learn and grow. They become friends. Now the Straight kids don't actually hate the Fag kid. The fag kid's kinda cool. -Ready for the weird that is the big BIG fear that is the impetus for so much hatred against gaydom- What happens if a boy from Striaght house likes the boy from Gay house too much and all of that fucking social programming FAILS! - I'm just sayin' - It's not like it happens like this, but it might, but I have no idea, 'cause imma big fag. Okay, I've babble enough.
It's not really my fault. I have been waiting for the ComCast guy to show up and I have had coffee and Dave's not here. Two days ago Dave said to me that Thomas Jefferson advocated scrapping the constitution every twenty years and rewriting it to serve the needs of the society in which it was written. Yeah, we never did that. Gosh I bet this is a long post. It's probably rife with spelling and grammatical errors. Yeah me.